Category Archives: edward snowden

New NSA Information from (and About) Snowden

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Interesting article about the Snowden documents, including comments from former Guardian editor Ewen MacAskill

MacAskill, who shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras for their journalistic work on the Snowden files, retired from The Guardian in 2018. He told Computer Weekly that:

  • As far as he knows, a copy of the documents is still locked in the New York Times office. Although the files are in the New York Times office, The Guardian retains responsibility for them.
  • As to why the New York Times has not published them in a decade, MacAskill maintains “this is a complicated issue.” “There is, at the very least, a case to be made for keeping them for future generations of historians,” he said…

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New Revelations from the Snowden Documents

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Jake Appelbaum’s PhD thesis contains several new revelations from the classified NSA documents provided to journalists by Edward Snowden. Nothing major, but a few more tidbits.
Kind of amazing that that all happened ten years ago. At this point, … Continue reading New Revelations from the Snowden Documents→

Snowden Ten Years Later

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In 2013 and 2014, I wrote extensively about new revelations regarding NSA surveillance based on the documents provided by Edward Snowden. But I had a more personal involvement as well.

I wrote the essay below in September 2013. The New Yorker agreed to publish it, but the Guardian asked me not to. It was scared of UK law enforcement, and worried that this essay would reflect badly on it. And given that the UK police would raid its offices in July 2014, it had legitimate cause to be worried.

Now, ten years later, I offer this as a time capsule of what those early months of Snowden were like…

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Spy report: 3.4M warrantless searches of US data under FISA last year

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The 3.4 million searches the ODNI disclosed Friday represent a significant increase from last year.

The post Spy report: 3.4M warrantless searches of US data under FISA last year appeared first on CyberScoop.

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Apple Adds a Backdoor to iMessage and iCloud Storage

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Apple’s announcement that it’s going to start scanning photos for child abuse material is a big deal. (Here are five news stories.) I have been following the details, and discussing it in several different email lists. I don’t have time right now to delve into the details, but wanted to post something.

EFF writes:

There are two main features that the company is planning to install in every Apple device. One is a scanning feature that will scan all photos as they get uploaded into iCloud Photos to see if they match a photo in the database of known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) maintained by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The other feature scans all iMessage images sent or received by child accounts — that is, accounts designated as owned by a minor — for sexually explicit material, and if the child is young enough, notifies the parent when these images are sent or received. This feature can be turned on or off by parents…

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The future of FISA

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News that court-approved Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) searches dropped to new lows in 2020 hit the papers recently, and it raised some eyebrows as well as speculation as to the root causes of the drop. Despite that speculation, current … Continue reading The future of FISA→

Dunhammer: NSA Blamed for Danish Spying on Euro Pols

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In a damning leaked report, Danish authorities reveal that the NSA spies on friendly foreign governments.
The post Dunhammer: NSA Blamed for Danish Spying on Euro Pols appeared first on Security Boulevard.
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Google Responds to Warrants for “About” Searches

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One of the things we learned from the Snowden documents is that the NSA conducts “about” searches. That is, searches based on activities and not identifiers. A normal search would be on a name, or IP address, or phone number. An about search would some… Continue reading Google Responds to Warrants for “About” Searches→